Sunday, March 16, 2014

The Virginia Flu

Unfortunately our last ten days have been dominated by the flu, which is why we did not add a blog post last week. We got sick on a Thursday and by Friday morning
both of us were chilled, feverish, achy and coughing. Luckily we have established a good
relationship with a nearby family doctor, and she got us in right away. She gave us some good medications to help us
with the symptoms and coughing and told us to stay home for at least 3 days, which
we did. We were able to do a few activities
the days after that, but mostly we stayed home and napped a lot. This Virginia flu was nasty and really
knocked us out for longer than we expected.
But now, after 10 days, we are almost back to 100%. We are grateful for good doctors, effective medicine,
yuja cha (Korean orange tea), a warm and cozy apartment, and understanding folks
that expressed concern and support.

The day before we started feeling sick we worked a good shift at Navy Marine
Corps Relief Society. I (Dan) worked two interesting cases. We had one young marine that had a very sad
situation. His finances were a mess and
there was no way he was going to be able to pay NMCRS back if he got a
loan. But in some special cases the
director is able to approve a grant where we give the marine the money with no
payback required. I suggested this to
the director in this particular case, and she agreed to a $1900 grant. I got to present the check to this young man
and he was almost in tears, something unusual for a hardened marine. He was so thankful and relieved that he had a
way out of his difficult financial crisis.
I also got to give a retired female marine colonel a check for $4100 so
that she could get an emergency root canal done. It is the biggest check I have seen yet. She was quite happy and could not wait to get
her tooth fixed. After our volunteer
work we walked into Quantico Town for dinner at an Asian restaurant. Quantico town is the small town that is
surrounded by the Marine base. It is about two blocks from where we do our
volunteer work. We were planning on
attending the start of the TBS graduation, which took place in the same
building where we volunteer, so did not want to lose our good parking place. When they have major events at the auditorium
the parking lot fills up quickly. We had to go to our Office Candidate School
family home evening that night, so we were not able to stay for the actual
graduation ceremonies. But we were able
to see our two TBS graduates and their families. Here is a picture of one of the 2nd Lieutenants and his
son with us.

We gave both of them
congratulation cards and wished them well and dashed off for our OCS family
home evening. It was a good meeting. Our LDS student had expressed some concern
last week about whether or not he had made the right decision about coming to
marine OCS, and he was actually considering dropping out. His dad had even emailed us to express his
concern and wanted us to let him know how his son was doing. So we had been thinking about him and praying
for him a lot. He was in a good mood and
said he had decided to go ahead and finish the school and accept his commission
as a marine officer. We talked about his decision for a while and
then Lezlie gave a great lesson on obedience.
He also loved the peanut butter brownies and ate about ten of them,
along with a pear, and orange, and about half a quart of milk. We sent his dad a nice email after we got
home. We are so happy to have been a
part of his journey through OCS and can’t wait to meet his family at the upcoming
graduation.

We did have a couple of fun dog activities during the tail end of our flu
recovery period. We have started working
with a dog group called Veterans Moving Forward. This is a non-profit group that trains dogs
and places them with veterans that have mental or physical disabilities. We are
going to try to volunteer a bit with this group. On two different days we drove to Fairfax,
Virginia to do Canine Good Citizen tests for six month old puppies, both Golden
Retrievers. The puppies were delightful and both passed
the test. The VMF people were pleased
with us and the way we conducted the test.
It was fun. We hope to do a bit
more volunteer work with this group.
They are fairly young and have only about a dozen puppies in their
pipeline right now. But they seem to have
their act together and have a dedicated group of volunteers. They have been able to get enough donations
up to this point, but they are thrilled to get us as free Canine Good Citizen
evaluators. This is one of the puppies we evaluated.

We got to participate in a lesson for a young Navy family on base. This is a part member family where she is a
member and he is not. But she had been
less active until she got pregnant. That
made her reconsider and she wanted to start going to church again. And he has been taking lessons from the sister
missionaries. This is the young couple
for whom I blessed the baby boy and with whom we have become close friends. We had a great meeting with them and talked
about how important and useful it was for them to pray as a couple. It really touched their hearts, we could
tell. We love this young family and hope
that one day he will join the church.

We got to attend both Family Day and the Commissioning Ceremony held as
part of the Officer Candidate School graduation. We got to meet the family of our sole LDS guy
in the school. They were great. It was fantastic to meet his mom and dad and
his two younger brothers. They thanked us for helping their son and gave
us a gift of some Georgia honey (they are from Atlanta). Our young marine was so happy that the school
was over and he had made it. The marines really know how to do ceremonies and
this Commissioning was no exception. The
band plays, the Chaplain gives a long prayer, patriotic speeches are made, and
then the candidates are officially sworn in as 2nd Lieutenants in
the Marines Corps. At the end the Marine
Corps Hymn is always sung - you know “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores
of Tripoli…” The way they do this is that
the band starts the song but only plays about 3 measures before dropping
out. Then the 100 or so candidates sing
the song loudly and with much gusto. Some
of them really get into it, and they are almost screaming the song. They sing all 3 verses. Then the crowd cheers wildly at the end. It is a pretty moving way to end the
ceremony. Here is a picture of the whole
group and also a picture of our guy.
Sister McGrath, of the couple that works with us at OCS, is also in the
picture. The commissioning ceremony is
held in the large atrium of the Marine Corps Museum. So those are real tanks and airplanes in the
background.

We ended up our week by attending Stake Conference. Although we are not 100% recovered from the
flu and still have scratchy throats, we joined the missionary choir and sang
lightly at the Saturday evening meeting.
It was a very good experience.
All of the young elders and sisters from the Woodbridge Zone sang, about
40 of us. And we made a good choir. What
we lacked in talent was made up for by the enthusiasm and the spirit of these
young missionaries. They were wonderful,
and it was a joy to be a part of it. We
sang “Called to Serve,” and a “Sisters in Zion/Army of Helaman” medley. It was an excellent meeting, and all of the
talks were devoted to missionary work.
One of our young sisters gave an excellent talk and her enthusiasm and
love of the work was contagious. The
Sunday session of conference was excellent as well, and we got to list to Elder
L Tom Perry from Salt Lake. It was a good
conference and a good start getting out and about after our battle with the
flu. We are ready to get busy again this week!